Invited Speaker: Odilia Lu

Speaker bio: Odilia Lu is a PhD candidate at the University of California, Berkeley whose research incorporates approaches to improve rigor and reproducibility in behavioral neuroscience. Motivated by widespread reproducibility issues - particularly in animal behavior research, where methodological variation can strongly influence outcomes - she spearheaded a collaborative research model in which multiple laboratories perform the same experiments to efficiently identify robust and replicable effects. Using this approach, she led a multi-institutional collaboration of 40 scientists across five laboratories to define replicable effects of psilocybin on mouse behaviors relevant to depression, anxiety, and PTSD. In recognition of this work, she received the NINDS Early-Career Rigor Champions Prize.

Talk Description: Reproducibility issues remain a central challenge across many scientific fields and are particularly prevalent in rodent behavioral neuroscience, where methodological variation across studies can lead to inconsistent findings. For drugs with therapeutic potential, such as psychedelic compounds, these reproducibility challenges are especially consequential. In this talk, I will present a multi-institutional collaborative approach in which five laboratories performed the same experiments to systematically identify robust and replicable effects of psilocybin on various mouse behaviors related to anxiety/avoidance, sociability, depression, and fear extinction. I will focus on the methodological framework of this collaboration and highlight the behavioral outcomes that reliably reproduced across laboratories. Through this presentation, I hope to spark discussion about how research practices and incentive structures can be reshaped to promote a more reproducible future in preclinical neuroscience.

Rigor and Reproducibility Seminar Series - UF Interdisciplinary T32 in Movement Disorders and Neurorestoration

This seminar series is jointly hosted by the UF Movement Disorders and Neurorestoration Program and the UF Health Science Center Libraries. Talks focus on rigor and reproducibility topics for the pre-doctoral training program.

This program and seminar series is funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) through T32 NS082128, awarded to PIs Dawn Bowers (College of PHHP), Melissa Armstrong and David E. Vaillancourt (College of HHP).

The seminar will be recorded, with the recording distributed to registered attendees after the event.